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Tips for avoiding plagiarism

Hello everybody!

First of all, I really hope you had an happy Easter!

Now, let's keep on working!

I must admit that I became familiar with the concept of plagiarism only when I wrote my thesis. Soon I will have to start working on my dissertation, so I'm very interested in what I can do to avoid it. Searching the web, I found a lot of interesting information about plagiarism, in particular suggestions you can/should follow to avoid legal actions. The information that follows gives you details about plagiarism.

1-First of all, in my opinion it's important to say what a source is. As Aaron states, it can be anything, "a book, an article, a movie, an interview, a microfilmed document, a downloaded image, an anonymous newsgroup posting" (Avoiding Plagiarism).

2-The question you always have to ask yourself is whether the source you found is trustworthy, reliable or not (see this list of criteria).

3- The most common ways to avoid plagiarism are quotations, paraphrases, and summaries. You can write the author's exact words in quotation marks, or convey the same ideas with your own words and naming the souces you used. It's better to name the source within the text (e.g. "X says", "X argues, maintains, states,..."), and not just at the end of the paragraph. As far as correct quotation is concerned, the APA system and the MLA system are commonly used.

4-Internet sources have to be treated like the other kinds of sources. So you're supposed to give name of the author, date when you retrieved the information, title, and URL.

5-Another important distinction has to be drawn between information that is protected by Intellectual Property Rights and common knowledge: the former obviously needs the original source while the latter is part of the public domain. Unfortunately, it's not always so easy to decide whether a piece of information is common knowledge or not.

I saved some useful information about this issue in Delicious.

See you soon,

Michela